Here's the situation. I defaulted on student loans years ago (over 100k) but over the last few years my career has taken off and with the extra income I am in the process of rehabiliting my SLs. The late payments have already aged off and my 9th payment for rehab is on July 15th. Once that happens, my credit report will have zero negatives. My CC utilization is <10% on one card and the rest are paid off (AMEX green being the exception, it sometimes shows a balance when it bills but is always PIF, of course.)
My current scores are between 660 and 680. I have worked for the same company for 7 years but I am leaving at the end of the month for a new job, same industry new company. My current income is ~65k and will be $76k at the new job. I also have 6 years of perfect (and reported) car payments.
I have two questions:
1. Am I likely to be able to get a new car loan for around $30-35k? (Toyota credit likely) I'll probably have a couple $k in negative equity. I can probably drop 2k cash to sweeten the deal if necessary.
2. Should I wait until next month? My credit scores should jump quite a bit once the student loan default status goes away, but the negative is that I will only have 1 month job history with the current company. I figure my credit score should be in the low 700s by August 1. Or, should I do it now with lower (but not terrible) scores but stellar job history with easy to verify income history?
Thanks in advance for the advice!
